Gator
by solnishka
Summary: Maksim Sirko, a corporal whose only talent is flying helicopters, crashes his Mi-8 into the Zone. He meets a stalker there who is determined to be more than a friend.


Corporal Maksim Sirko coughed at the smells of smoldering plastic and burning oil, then gasped as he rolled onto his back. Pain gnawed at every inch of his body. He breathed heavily for several seconds before getting himself under control.

There, his helicopter—lying on her side with her tail-end just _gone_, her engine on fire and belching smoke, one blade broken off and two others bent… there would be no way to salvage her, absolutely none.

Maksim coughed again, then crawled to the Mi-8. His head was spinning and he felt nauseous whenever he tried to look up above a certain point in the afternoon sky. He staggered upright, leaning against the helicopter's underbelly for support, then folded at the knees and sank back down again. He remained standing on the second try.

The pilot clawed at his helmet's chinstrap, managing to undo it and pushing it off his head. It landed in the lush grass at his feet with a soft thud. The visor was covered with a spiderweb of cracks, and the helmet itself was dented and badly scratched. If he hadn't been wearing it, Maksim would have been dead with a fractured skull rather than alive with a severe concussion after the crash.

The crash! Maksim's eyes widened, and he tried to remember what had happened. He was a great pilot; his training sergeant had said he was one of the best he'd ever seen. The accident couldn't have been caused by something as stupid as forgetting to refuel or hitting the wrong button on the console. It must have been one of those damn stalkers, either armed with an RPG, or able to decapitate his sweet girl's rotor mast with a lucky shot, or… something.

"Hey, you!"

Maksim turned his head towards the voice and overbalanced, nearly falling. He saw a ragged figure wearing a leather jacket and carrying an SKS walking towards him.

"Fuck off!" he yelled, or tried to; his voice cracked on the last syllable.

The stalker kept walking towards him. Maksim pulled his pistol out of its holster, then realized that there was no magazine in the slot. He stared down at it, trying to figure out what to do through the fog in his brain, as the stalker closed the distance between them.

"Drop your weapon!"

Maksim hesitated, then did the sensible thing and dropped it.

The stalker jogged close and frowned. His face was dirty and splattered with freckles.

"Dude, you look like shit."

"…Yeah," Maksim managed.

"I'm amazed you survived the impact."

"Yeah."

A thought slowly crawled to the forefront of Maksim's mind. He narrowed his eyes. "You… you shot down my Mina."

"Mina?"

The pilot patted the helicopter. "My girl," he said. "Mina."

"Awww, you _named _it?"

Maksim snarled and stepped away from the Mi-8 to swing his fist at the grinning stalker. The stalker skipped aside and let the pilot fall onto his face in the grass.

"Tell you what: why don't you help me carry stuff back to Sidorovich, and I won't kill you or leave you here for the dogs. Sound good?"

Maksim rolled onto his back and stared up at the stalker. The motion made it feel as though a heavy ball was swinging around inside his head and rebounding off of his temples. He groaned, then clutched at his midsection as his stomach twisted.

"Excellent," the stalker said. "D'you think the black box would get me any money?"

"Fzgdfl_argh_."

"I have no idea what that means."

The stalker hopped onto the downed helicopter, somehow managed to open one of her side doors, and then disappeared inside. Maksim held his breath, but there was no ensuing commotion within the Mi-8. Apparently none of the special forces team he had been transporting to Dark Valley had survived the crash, or else they were too weak and/or injured to react. After what could have been either several minutes or an hour, the stalker emerged again, this time loaded down with looted AKs and military equipment.

"Catch!" he called, and tossed down several prizes. Maksim rolled out of the way in time to avoid being bludgeoned with a grenade launcher. More things followed, and the pilot took refuge behind a tree to get out of the line of fire. It was only when the sunlight was reddening with the onslaught of a summer evening that the stalker was finally satisfied that there was nothing more he wanted from the helicopter. He climbed down and began picking things up from the grass.

"C'mon," he said. "Help me carry shit."

Maksim felt slightly better after sitting behind the tree. He stood up, wasn't overwhelmed with vertigo, and then helped the stalker gather up his plunder. He felt bad for helping; the man had (probably) killed Mina and by extension the team they had been carrying, as well as being a stalker of the Zone, a soldier's natural enemy.

_Soldiers are usually smart enough to remember ammunition for their pistols, though_, Maksim thought with a twinge of bitterness. Yes, he was a great pilot, but he hadn't exactly excelled in any other aspect of his training. Even concussed, he had no illusions about his ability to survive; he either helped the stalker, or else died horribly sometime tonight in an anomaly or the jaws of a pseudo-dog.

But for all that he was Maksim's natural enemy, the stalker was decidedly friendly as they gathered up what he had looted and set off for the rookie village and Sidorovich's bunker. He introduced himself as Gator and said he had been a manual laborer in Zhytomyr before coming to the Zone.

"I _liked _my military service, y'know," he said, carrying a bulging backpack as well as five assault rifles. "And my sergeant kept telling me that I'd have a great career if I stayed, maybe even make spetsnaz—'cept I hate being told what to do. So I fucked off back to Zhytomyr, spent a year there, got engaged, then got _un_-engaged when the bitch left me, and decided I didn't want to spend my life digging ditches. I'm not smart enough to go to uni, and I like shooting guns and not paying taxes, so—" he shrugged, "—I came here. What about you?"

"My name's Maksim," Maksim said. "I like helicopters."

"And?"

Maksim tried to put his life's story in order, and then to decide which parts were and were not suitable to tell someone he had met less than a day ago who was barely an ally. He couldn't focus on more than one or two things at once; his thoughts fled through his fingers like wisps of fog whenever he tried. He opened and closed his mouth several times, then: "…I like _piloting _helicopters?"

Gator snickered. "Cool, cool. Glad to see you've got your priorities in order."

They reached the rookie village. Maksim had only ever seen it from above, and at ground-level the place was very different. Stalkers—ragged, dirty, and armed like Gator—squatted around a campfire, smoking and drinking, or lounged in the doorways of broken-down houses. Several of them stared at Maksim's uniform with narrowed, suspicious eyes as he passed, but made no move to stop him as Gator waved and called out greetings to people he knew. Maksim hunched his shoulders and avoided eye contact as they followed the dirt path through the village to the bunker.

Sidorovich's reception was no warmer than the stalkers': "Who's this?"

"A temporary assistant," Gator replied. "His name is Maksim and he likes helicopters."

The trader gave a disdainful grunt. "Stop wasting my time and show me what you've got."

The rest was haggling.

Maksim didn't pay attention. Once his pack was off his shoulders he squatted down and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes and hoping that the pounding in his head would die down. He felt sick, and more than anything wanted to lie down on a soft mattress and sleep off the remainder of his concussion. He only roused himself when the toe of Gator's boot nudged his thigh.

"Hey," the stalker said, "Time to go."

Maksim got to his feet and followed the stalker back up the stairs. He wasn't sure how much time had passed in the bunker, but the sun had slipped halfway behind the horizon when they emerged and the twilight was deepening into true night. He could hear crickets chirping and smell the woodsmoke of the stalkers' campfire drifting lazily through the warm, humid air.

Gator stopped short of the village and shifted his weight onto one foot, staring up at the sky with its first faint suggestions of stars and scratching the back of his neck with one hand. He chewed his lip for a moment before looking back down at Maksim.

"So," the stalker said. "So, uh, you just go east a bit over the ridge and find the road, and then follow it south… the checkpoint will be right there, with your people."

"Thanks," Maksim said.

A boar gave a deep, grunting bellow somewhere nearby, the noise echoing through the trees. Something else screamed in response, but was abruptly cut off.

"Or…" Gator continued slowly, avoiding eye contact with the pilot. He was scratching the back of his neck again. "Or you could spend the night here and not get eaten. I mean, you're not armed, so it would be safest to wait until daylight."

"So you want me to stay… here? In the village?"

"Yeah."

Maksim glanced towards the east, towards the road that would take him both to safety and to an enraged boar. He was tired, sick, and rather doubted he would be able to outrun a mutated pig.

"If I stay, what's the likelihood of your people killing me in my sleep?"

"Pretty low, s'long as I'm with you."

Maksim tried to think for a moment, then gave up and shrugged. "Okay."

Gator finally looked the pilot in the eye. He was grinning now, and one of his front teeth was chipped. "Awesome!" he said.

None of the stalkers looked pleased, however, when Maksim followed Gator into the village a second time, and several of them scowled outright when the pilot squatted down in an empty place in front of their fire. Gator flopped down beside him, lit a cigarette in the flames, and used his teeth to pull back the fastener on a tin of… something that smelled like fish and vinegar. Gator picked out pieces of it and popped them into his mouth between puffs on his cigarette, and Maksim stared at the ground in front of him and tried not to throw up from the stench.

Time passed. The moon rose and the stars came out. The campfire grew less crowded as stalkers drifted off to their sleeping places. Maksim jumped when Gator nudged him.

"Here," the stalker said, and shoved a mug of tea into his hands.

Maksim mumbled something that resembled a thank-you. He raised the mug to his face and sniffed once—lemon. He drank, feeling warmth curl in his stomach. The nausea subsided a bit. He closed his eyes, and his shoulders sagged as the tension drained out of his body.

Gator cautiously put an arm around him, edging closer. Maksim took another drink of the tea, letting himself be pulled flush against the stalker's side, leaning on him.

"So," Gator said softly, "I was thinking just… well, I was thinking that maybe, if, you know, you wanted to stay…"

Maksim was already asleep on his shoulder.

* * *

If you'd like to see more and other writing of mine, please consider checking out my tumblr at solnishkawrites. I'm currently accepting ko-fi prompts (pay me three dollars via the service ko-fi and I'll write you a short story about whatever you'd like).


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